Bespoke Design versus Website Themes

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Tip #1 – Modern Website Themes

When I talk about modern themes, I mean themes that you might find on Envato’s ThemeForest (mainly for WordPress enabled websites) and also WrapBootstrap (if you’re looking for more customisable themes Bootstrap themes).

Themes have evolved massively over the last 2-3 years and you can get some really creative and professional-looking themes from ThemeForest and WrapBootstrap, which work really well on both mobile devices and on standard PCs and Macs. I would recommend, however, that when you're using themes make sure that you only use one if it reflects your business's core message, or that it can be adapted to do so easily.

I often see businesses downloading and installing Wordpress and then installing themes which are very disjointed from the brand and the core values that they are portraying. Ensure that the two are aligned because it will give a true representation of your business when somebody finds you online. There are specific design trends which quickly find their way into these themes and templates, it's a very good way of being up-to-date very quickly. If you think that your theme is out-of-date or you haven't updated it for two or three years, then visit ThemeForest or WrapBootstrap and either download an updated version of your current theme or find a new theme which is bang up to date. These updated themes will include the latest in emerging web technology and design trends which will be intrinsically built within them.

Using a theme removes the element of design time required, the flipside to a theme is getting a custom or bespoke design created for you. This can be a time-consuming process. If you install a theme on your website, then it removes the need for design and the time associated with it.

Tip #2 Bespoke Design will Reflect Your Brand

Secondly I'm going to be talking about bespoke design, and the benefits of that, and the major benefit is that bespoke design is customised for your business, directly. It will truly reflect your brand very well, and represent your core values, your logo, your branding, your colour schemes, fonts, and your imagery. It will represent your brand in a very personable and accurate way in terms of how your business is portrayed.

Bespoke design is much more flexible in terms of revisions. By the time you've sliced it up and created a layout, it's much more lightweight, quite often, than an installable theme. The downside to it, as I mentioned before, is that it is a time-consuming process.

There are ways to speeding up the design process. Within my business we use a unique prototyping methodology whereby we take a theme which you like the look and feel of, in terms of layout, and we combine it with your brand over the course of a two-day workshop. By the end of the 2-day workshop we've got a working prototype for your website which truly represents the core values and the brand values of your business very accurately.

Traditional methods of design, both graphic and website design, use a “ping-pong” method of communication to manage the project. i.e. you send the designer a brief, they then send you a proposal back, you then accept the proposal, they then do several mock-ups, those come back, you decide you like number two and three, but you like that feature from number one, and you start this ping-pong match, this back and forth of feature request and change request, and whatever else, and it can take several weeks or several months.

Going through a prototyping process, live, whilst you the client are sat opposite the designer looking at a computer screen, telling them what to do, means that there's immediate feedback and it speeds the process up by a factor of ten. If you are considering having a customised web design created, ask your chosen designer whether they might do a prototyping session with you. OK, it takes up two days' worth of your time. But you'll get exactly what you want out of it.

The length of time traditional design methods take could mean that, during the several weeks or month between order and delivery, your core values, direction and energy within your business will have shifted. What you wanted when you started the process might be very different to the outcome at the end of the process.

Tip #3 – Remember the “7 Second Rule”

The seven second rule is the time from when someone clicks on a link to your website after searching for something on Google to when your home page loads up. During this time the user has got seven seconds to work out who you are, what you do, and what they're going to do next.

If you can't get that message across within seven seconds, then your website has failed, and it's more than likely they're going to go elsewhere or click on the next search result in Google. With a theme, when you're customising it yourself, remember to ask yourself, “Is it clear who we are; what we do and; where you want your customer to go next?” That's seven second rule. Don't forget if your website doesn't even load within seven seconds, then you've lost that customer already before they've even got to your website.

Tip #4 – Keep It Simple Stupid

My fourth tip is to remember the K.I.S.S. principle. That stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid.

If a design becomes too busy and too cluttered, then your core message, i.e. what you want your customer to do next, is going to be lost in amongst all of the noise on your website. This includes wordy websites, websites with lots of features, sites with too many colours, or maybe there's buttons and calls to actions all over the place. It becomes very confusing to the end user.

In an ideal world you want your website to have a single call to action that draws your website viewer's eye into one specific spot on the page. It may be linked to a product page or an inquiry form, or a download button – but the key point is that it's a very clear call to action.

Typically, a complex layout can lead to very complex code sitting behind in the background of the website. This will make the website run slowly, and will result in errors. These errors will stop parts of your website from running. Errors may result in a website that looks great on a PC, laptop or a Mac, but a disaster when you load it up on your smartphone.

In Summary

1. Themes can look very creative and professional, but you may not get the customisation that you're looking for, in terms of attaining your brand values
2. Bespoke design will better reflect your brand. Consider running a prototyping session with your designer.
3. Remember the seven second rule. “Who are you? What do you do? Where do you want your website visitors to go next?
4. Finally, practice using the K.I.S.S. principle, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Otherwise, you add extra complexity within your site and your site and you'll confuse your users.